Sage Takes Thyme

In this episode, our hosts Elissa and Amira delve into how compassion shapes the way we live, love, and lead - especially as women. They speak about the wisdom that comes with age, sharing some of the lessons they’ve learned about self-love, relationships, and managing life's complexities. They also explore the concept of impact and how they aim to see positive effects in their lives and in the lives of others through the choices they make.

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Hosts: Elissa Freiha (@freiha), Amira Salah-Ahmed (@amiralx)

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Creators and Guests

Host

Amira Salah-Ahmed

Womena co-founder + Director / Producer / Writer of things...

Host

Elissa Freiha

Womena co-founder + Third Culture Kid + Advocate for intersectional feminism & equality

What is Sage Takes Thyme?

This is not a cooking show, but it will nourish your soul (maybe). Womena’s founders open a new dialogue with their community and give their perspectives on relevant, topical issues that affect women in and from the Arab world. This podcast will serve as a space for genuine exploration of the authentic experience of two women in search of belonging and balance, using storytelling to reclaim and redefine the distorted narratives that surround them.

Understanding that there are so many different

layers to what a woman should be.

She should be a mother, she should be a daughter,

she should be a wife, she should be a sister.

And all of those things have such a

breadth of expectation for you to fulfill.

Whereas men do have levels and levels

of expectations on them as well.

The provider, the protector, the man of

the house, the breadwinner of the family.

And there's a big culture of

family honor, of family respect.

The house name, you know, and you can't like

bring shame upon your house if you don't

fulfill these roles, whatever role you're playing.

One thing that I've worked on a lot

is this idea of like people pleasing.

It sounds like a nice thing.

People pleasing, like you're pleasing

the people around you.

I learned how toxic people pleasing can

really be to you as an individual.

Hello. Hi, Aya. Mic check. One, two, one, two.

Hi, Hadi. Hi Aya. Hi everyone. Hi.

Hi Rythma.

Hi, Monica.

Hi, audience.

Welcome to another episode of Sage Takes Thyme.

I'm Elissa.

I'm still Alisa.

I'm drinking some Sage.

I'm Amira.

And today we're going to talk about

many things, but mainly compassion and the

kind of wisdom that comes with age.

Things that you learn about yourself, about other

people, about managing life and yourself, about like

your perspective on loving yourself, loving others.

Yeah, yeah.

Why is that so hard?

It's so hard. Which one?

Loving yourself or loving others?

I feel like self compassion is the hardest one for me.

Yeah, I'm very good at acknowledging, recognizing,

supporting, making space for other people's selves

and feelings and emotions and difficult times.

But then I get super self critical and I'm

not so good at the self compassion thing.

It's like really surprisingly difficult.

I don't know if you relate to that. I do.

I think it's not something we're raised to have

as a skill and it is a skill and

it takes practice and it changes over time.

We're not raised to have compassion for ourselves.

And I will say, especially as women, you're really raised

to kind of look outward and figure out what around

you needs to be tweaked, shifted, changed so that everyone

else can be comfortable or the person around you can

be like happy or having fun or whatever.

And we don't necessarily learn early on to look

inwards and figure out what our needs are.

But I do think that that's something that I've seen you

evolve in and I've also been working on for my own.

But it's hard yeah, it is.

It's something that a lot of years of

therapy and book reading and friendly conversations for

hours has been helping me do.

Especially when you have so much that you're, like

you said, you're raised to give towards so much.

But as a founder also, and you have a

team of people who are like this other chosen

family that you're now responsible for, you're accountable to.

I try to at least put into the company all the

learnings that I have for myself as a person who's working

and who was heavily burnt out for multiple years.

Not addressing it, really,

not prioritizing mental health.

I want to avoid that at all costs for my team.

Yeah, I feel like it's a.

It's a word, it's a trait, it's a quality,

and it's a perspective and a lens to have

that is far too often missing from everything. Right.

Everyone wants to try to be objective, or they

want to villainize or cancel people and things.

And it's so easy to label things in this binary

of, like, good and evil and bad and great.

And instead of really looking at the complexities, and we

love talking about it, the nuances that contribute to people

behaving in a certain way, or a work environment being

toxic or your own mental health deteriorating.

I think we also have this luxury

at Womena when we talk about compassionate,

like team building and treating people with

compassion, especially in the professional context.

And no, we don't have such a rigid structure and

roles that are like, it's not like a factory.

It's not like, you need to do this, put this here, and

then this person takes it and does this thing with it.

It's a very collaborative space, or at

least that's what we hope it is.

And so there's a bit more room to instill more

compassion in the way that we build and the way

that we manage people, in the way that we nurture

people's passions and give them that space.

Those are the kinds of things that we want to

get out of people when we're telling their stories.

And so it would be, like, very contradictory

not to have that intentionally within the structure

of the company and the team.

And also, to be honest, we're

not always, like, great at it.

Sometimes we fail, sometimes we fall short.

Sometimes, like, the demands of.

Or the needs of production or whatever

are much higher than other times.

And so there is less space for.

To take into considerations people's schedule

or what they're dealing with.

But it's at the heart, there

is an intention to be compassionate.

Sometimes we do it better than others.

But I think it's important to also say that

we're not always, like, from the team's perspective.

Sure.

That we're always exactly catering to

their needs in that moment.

But I think for me, at least in other companies

I've worked for, there's a lot more room to express

my personal needs and circumstances and work around them.

In this company versus other companies versus others.

Yeah, we set such high standards for, like, how we

want to be as a company, how we want our

team to feel, how we want to feel.

And if we, as we frequently do, over

commit to things and overshoot our goals away

from our capacity, we start beating ourselves up

like, again, that, ugh, we did this again.

Or like, oh my God, we're exhausted again.

And that's where we go. It's okay.

Like, self compassion.

It's a learning process.

I think we've tried to address this habit

that Womena has been in, frankly, since its

inception of always running on this treadmill and

doing more than our capacity should allow for.

That is unfortunately a part of the DNA of

this company that we have been trying to unravel

for the better part of the last 10 years.

And I feel like we only now, in

this year of 2024, when we're recording this,

we've been able to free ourselves from that.

We took some really difficult decisions.

We kind of like went against all of

our previous instincts and made some hard choices

and had really difficult conversations that basically led

us to say, you know what?

We're not dealing with this anymore.

And that opened up for a new way of

operating that I think is a lot more holistic.

At least that's how I've been feeling this year.

I think there's.

You can talk more about it, but there's been

a pattern of, like, every December almost confronting a

potential burnout and an exhaustion that hits the team.

After running, running, running all year to get everything

out on time, on the deadlines that we want

at a time when consumers and audiences are engaged.

And then come the holiday season, Christmas time and New

Year's and the, you know, when everything kind of dies

down and everyone logs out, we look at ourselves and

we're usually like, we can't do this again.

Like, I, I don't know about you,

but I'm not doing it again.

And we might not be doing the exact same

project again, but we do end up committing to

other things that get us to that same place.

So we made it very clear in December of 2023

that we were going to be way more conservative with

the choices that we made for the amount of content

we were going to be putting out.

We were way more conscious of the resources needed

to put out certain productions and certain timelines.

Yeah, you have to try a lot of different things.

Whether it's in your personal life or

when your relationships with other people or

your partner or your family.

There's a lot of shifts and

dynamics that happen over the years.

And it's only the older you get and the more

you get to know yourself more, that's when you can

start to have a little bit more compassion for yourself

and the people around you, but also to plan your

life in a more realistic way, to set goals that

are more aligned with your values.

And these things take time because

like wisdom takes time and sage.

Sage takes thyme.

Like the wisdom that comes with age is very

important because without it you're not going to be

able to really have compassion for other people or

yourself properly until you go through some challenges.

Like life roughens you up a little bit, you know.

Do you have to go through similar experiences

to feel compassion for people similar to them?

Yeah, no, not exactly. Because we're not going to all

through the same exact experiences.

But I think you definitely develop more

compassion the older you get because of

the experiences you go through.

So that's not to say that your younger self did

not have any compassion for others or empathy for others.

But definitely the more you go through and the more

you see in life and the more you see other

people go through, the more space you make for people's

different intricacies and like their character traits and things that

affect them and you just have a more comprehensive outlook

on life than what could be a bit more. Yeah.

Limited earlier on.

What is something that you learned in the last 10

years that now has become such a like instinctive kind

of second nature thing that you apply in how you

see yourself, how you deal with others.

You know, what is something that you've

learned in the last 10 years? Yeah.

Or last 10 months?

I'm learning a lot different. Fully different.

Like not a cell in my body is

the same as it was 10 years ago. So there's really.

Yeah.

I mean actually scientifically. Yeah. Right.

But like emotionally.

But emotionally I'm like a different human.

I don't think I had a fully formed

like self identity and I still don't.

It's something that I've been like actively learning to foster and

connect with because so much of my earlier identity was linked

to what I was supposed to be, what I was expected

to be, what people wanted me to be, what I was

told by the media I could be.

And now it's more about defining those things

for myself and feeling within myself what is

the truth, if that makes sense.

Like I can feel in my gut

when something is true to me now. Yeah.

And I couldn't before.

What do you think was a.

Was the blockage before that was like

stopping you from making that connection?

Everybody else's voices.

Everybody else's voices were in my own head

and in my heart, except my own.

And I've only.

You know, I think 2020 was the first time I really

started listening to my own voice and what it wanted.

Even when I was thinking about where I wanted to

live, I would justify it based on other people.

My family, my friends, my partner, my company.

Like all of those things could contribute to

the choice of where I would live.

But me wanting to live somewhere

did not contribute, wasn't valid. Yeah.

So you, like, shut out your own needs and desires.

I didn't even recognize them or hear them until literally like

two years ago or a year ago because I was such

a person of, like, duty towards others and of self sacrificing

for others that there was no space for me.

Do you think that's common?

Like, do you see that in your circle

of, like, female friends that you have?

Is it a gender specific thing?

I mean, do you see in other

women only or in men as well?

Do you feel like it's been shifting

as people are getting more awareness around,

like, intuition, mental health, things like that?

I think it's very cultural, if I'm being

honest, and I don't think it's super gendered.

I'm sure it affects women more than it affects men.

Only from my own experience as a woman.

But understanding that there are so many different

layers to what a woman should be.

And she should be a mother, she should be a daughter,

she should be a wife, she should be a sister.

And all of those things have such a

breadth of expectation for you to fulfill.

Whereas men don't have as many of those things, but

they do have levels and levels of expectations on them

as well, and titles that they need to fulfill.

The provider, the protector, the man of the

house, the, you know, breadwinner of the family.

Like a lot of those things, I think

are very culturally heavy in the Middle east.

And there's a big culture of

family honor, of family respect.

The house name,

You know, and you can't like, bring

shame upon your House if you don't

fulfill these roles, whatever role you're playing.

So learning to connect you and what you want

and how you feel with what actually manifests in

your life has been a learning for you. Yeah.

And I thought it, I mean, I didn't even get

it when people kept asking like what do you want?

I couldn't identify it. I would freeze.

And I still freeze.

Because the second you asked me what do I want?

Even if you ask me like what

do you want for dinner tonight?

Like how many times is the joke that women

go, I don't know, like whenever you want. Why?

Because there's a type of like system that's

happening in our brains that puts in these

voices of like what we should want.

We should want a plant based diet

that's heavy on protein, that you know,

doesn't contribute to like heavy calorie consumption.

Or we should want something light

and fresh cause it's summer.

Or we should want something warm

and cozy because it's winter.

Or I don't know, I'm on a date

so I can't eat pasta because it's messy.

So I'm going to eat sushi like

you know, as opposed to what?

Give me the pasta.

Just what do you actually want?

Where's the spaghetti?

I want rigatoni Alfredo with a lot of sauce.

I want a pizza. Yeah.

I think for me, in the last 10, whatever, however

many years, Yanni, the one thing that I've worked on

a lot is this idea of like people pleasing.

And it sounds like a nice thing, people pleasing.

Like you're pleasing the people around you.

You're making sure that they're comfortable,

they're happy, they're safe, whatever.

And a thing to it sounds like a good thing to do.

It also sounds like even if it has negative side effects,

that they're not as like detrimental as other things that people

deal with that are a bit more, maybe chronic, a bit

more heavier in like the mental health space.

But I learned a lot by like going

to therapy and reading a lot and listening

to whatever and talking to friends.

I learned how toxic people pleasing can

really be to you as an individual. Yeah.

And I would never have guessed all the branches of

things that it affects in your life and how you

are, how you carry yourself, how it can define you

so much or misdefine you really like because you're acting

a way that is not true to what you want.

It's similar to what you're saying.

But I would say for me, I would label it differently.

I Would say that it comes from that people pleasing

side and learning to watch out for that and to

protect myself from that and all the effects that it

has on me and my authenticity and how I'm truly

being real with everyone around me.

Not that I was being fake before, but my dealings with

people and my approach to the world and to work and

to relationships and to my family was much more.

What does that thing or person need first?

Miles more before I think about what it is that I

want and need and the boundaries that should exist there.

You're almost forgetting yourself in that process.

Oh, completely.

And I was raised to think that that was a good thing.

Yeah.

No, this is what women do. I'm gonna say women. Yeah.

I'm sure that's not only to women, but as

you said, like, for my experience as a woman.

And I also compared it a lot with how my mother is.

And the things that she taught me

from her perspective were very important and

very beneficial and valuable to her.

And she still holds on to them to this day.

And it's part of who she is.

But it took me a long time to.

To separate myself from what my mother is

because she is a role model for me.

So I always kind of, without thinking, wanted to be

like her without realizing that I have a totally different

capacity to do that consistently for other people.

My energy levels are totally different.

My values are similar in many ways, but

they've evolved over time, given the changes in

the world and who we are.

And so disconnecting that, like, I can still love my

mother and have her as a role model for me

without trying to be like her as a.

As a daughter, as a sister, especially after I got

married, as a wife, that was a huge pivot point

where I really had to confront myself and then confront

her with things where she actually, her response to me

was, why are you trying to be like me?

And it was so freeing for me.

Did she really say that? Yeah, yeah.

Talking to her as a human adult woman. Yeah.

Not just as my mother, which is also like a space

for compassion that I think if I could tell other younger

people to make sure to get to know your mothers at

one point, as humans, as adults, not just as your mothers,

that was a really big learning for me.

And it was.

It opened up a really big space for self

awareness because hearing me speak, she kind of got

that I'm trying to mimic her behavior.

And she herself knows that obviously

we're not the same person.

And so her telling me, like, you're a different person,

I Don't expect you to be exactly like me.

I know you're different.

And she also told me something that was very

wise, you know, full of sage for her.

She's like, you saw me.

Because I was born when she was, like, 32.

So by the time I had, like, was forming,

understood my world around me, and started, like, acquiring

memories that I still remember to this day.

She was, like, in her 40s, you know?

So she's like, you are comparing yourself now to

me as a mother or a wife or whatever,

after having lived that for a long time and

evolved and had challenges and faced them.

Whereas right now, as a wife, for

example, this is year one for you. Yeah.

And for your partner.

So why are you expecting your relationship to

be like, yeah, me and your father. Yeah.

You still haven't gone through the hard.

You haven't worked out all your issues.

So in that, she really freed me from trying

to be like her, which I didn't realize I

was trying to do, and feeling burnt out, feeling

like that's not really what I want.

Feeling like we have different values and kind of

being annoyed with her for a while, but I

didn't realize that she didn't ask this of me,

you know, so that the people.

Not directly, but it helps to also confront that.

And that's something that you acquire also with experience and

with age and to confront the people in your life

in a way that gives you a lot more understanding

of who they are as humans and why the dynamic

between you and them is the way it is. Yeah.

Because when we're younger, we

rebel against that dynamic.

We're, like, resisting it.

We're rebelling against it.

We're in different ways.

But then you get to a point where you need

to, like, confront that and figure out where it comes

from and what you can learn from that person. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow.

That's wild.

And I can imagine, like, the frustration that almost comes

from her being like, you're putting so much effort into

doing something I don't even want you to do.

And you're like, wait a minute.

But I did like her.

A version of her voice was in the back of

your mind telling you, this is how you have to

be and this is what you have to do.

But in reality, she doesn't expect

that at all from you.

And the opening of the choices also that all

of a sudden comes from, wait a minute.

If I don't have to do all these

things in this way, what do I do? What do I do?

Yeah, what do I do?

And that's a big shift between our parents generation.

Our generation is that in this culture, a lot of

times they didn't have the exposure to the amount of

choices available to them of ways to live their life.

Yeah.

We have the luxury and the privilege to

have so many options given to us.

Whether it's literally simply breaking out of just that,

you know, dichotomy of like, working or not working,

staying at home or being in the workplace.

And then what are you working and in what capacity?

And are you a founder or are you not?

Are you working in corporate?

Are you working in a small business?

Do you have a craft that you want to start?

There's so many different things that you can do

and so many ways that you can engage with

the world now that are acceptable culturally.

That just weren't the case back then.

There's so many different ways to meet a partner.

There's some that are acceptable.

All of a sudden, back in the

day, that was not the case.

There's more options for things like divorce now that

weren't an option, or more people understanding that maybe

it's not just marriage or divorce, but you have,

like, pause or conscious uncoupling or like, you know,

we're gonna be like, co parenting our kid because

we're not together romantically.

But all of these are completely

new ways of thinking that.

It's like you're.

What is the paradox of choice all of a sudden?

Because now you're frozen.

And you really have to dig deep to hear your

own guiding compass, you know, to tell you what to.

What to do.

I'm finding that near impossible.

I mean, obviously near impossible. But I'm getting.

You're doing it.

I'm getting there.

The sage is saging.

I feel it.

So the time is timing.

There was something that you really

needed to do last year. Yeah.

Now that we're talking about having compassion for

oneself, and we also previously talked about, like,

entrepreneurship and burnout and all of that.

And it took you a really long time to

put your foot down and do it for yourself.

What was that thing?

It was taking a break.

Like, a real. A real break.

Like, I needed.

I think I hit burnout when I was.

When in 2017, was very clear I should

have taken a break, and I didn't.

And so what happened was I just compounded the

stress with more projects, more effort, more time dedicated

to work, and less downtime for myself.

And that kind of came to, like,

a halt at the end of 2022.

And I remember really asking for help in a very

deep way from my team for the first time.

There were other times that that burnout came out

and I maybe allowed myself to take like two

weeks or 10 days to like breathe and just

rebalance and have my friends help me just come

back to terms with better mental health.

But I really came to you at the end of 2022

and I was like, listen, I need a significant break.

And I'm spiraling in my role.

I'm spiraling in my ability

to contribute to this company.

I feel all of these crazy

things that don't make sense realistically.

Like, I was feeling really worthless.

I was feeling really, like, invaluable and useless.

And all this, like very heavy self critical

commentary was going on in my brain.

And like, I was gonna.

I was gonna tap out and let you guys do it.

And then you calmed me down. You're.

You're uncomfortable.

Well, fast forward.

I did it, so it's fine.

But I was really not okay.

I wanted to tap out and just let

you guys keep doing what you were doing.

And I thought I was making everything worse.

I remember you reached a point

where it was like, you take. Take it.

Yeah, just take it and just keep doing.

And I'm out. I need to.

I need, I need to tap out. And that was.

I know, like, if we could just switch

the cameras around right now to the team.

But I think it's important because it really hits

on how much even though you knew that I

was maybe struggling with mental health or I was

like really pushing myself and not taking a break.

Like, I don't think I took a legit holiday for years.

And when I took a break, I went into

like, other roller coaster projects that were emotionally like.

Yeah.

You know, or you had a lot of stuff

going on in my personal life as well. It's okay.

It's okay.

I made it out the other side, guys. I'm. I'm good.

We're good.

I have three therapists now.

I do.

So, I mean, it really goes to show the

level that not addressing your mental health can go.

I was just in my head.

It wasn't necessarily anything anybody else was doing.

It was all a narrative that was building and I

was spiraling into like a really unfortunate, dark place.

And out of the wonderful compassion that you showed me.

And we had a wonderful business coach also who

was working with us, you guys suggested that I

take some time and take a sabbatical. Yeah.

Which I didn't even know was an option. Yeah.

Like an extended leave where I don't work on that.

Like, that was bonkers.

Even if I take in days I was available or I

was answering and I was like, I was just so shook

that I could do that and that actually with enough planning,

like, yeah, sure, at least I can step back and we

can prep the people that I was managing to operate independently

and everything was going to be okay.

It's amazing that, that previous to that con, those, I mean,

it took a few weeks to figure out what to do.

But like, previous to opening up about it, you had

already talked yourself into a space where you only saw

like two or three options for what can be done.

And you came to me and you were like, since

I feel this way, like, here are the options.

And I remember feeling like, no, none of these, like, love

you and I acknowledge your need to take time off.

But none of these are like,

what, where are the other options?

Like, what are the other alternatives?

Because these very like, kind of like doomsday scenarios where

you feel so, like you're not adding any value, like

you're not contributing, like you're worthless, like you said, became

like a self fulfilling prophecy so that you couldn't find

ways or ends to engage with the team or me

or the company in a meaningful way that was nourishing

and fulfilling for you.

And so it led you to like, okay, so that's not working.

So I either distanced myself, you know, the options

that you came up with as like a. To present.

And that was a difficult moment because I

didn't know how to say, but I did.

I was like, no, you did.

You said none of these.

Yeah, none of why this one doesn't work.

This one is not something I accept.

This one is not right for you.

Like, I won't let you do that.

Like, but how about we plan for a

proper sabbatical for you where you take.

Yeah, like you said, you didn't

realize it was an option.

And that's the kind of like when

we're talking about having compassion for yourself.

And you didn't.

Even at that really low point, you couldn't

even fathom giving yourself that space and that

grace to heal or to just disconnect. Yeah.

Or to, to be honest either.

Like, it didn't occur to me that the

team and my partnership with you, the company,

could support me in that personal way.

Because it's like I felt like everybody works

so hard for this shared goal of Womena

and I'm here to support them and they're

supporting me in this goal, in this mission.

But like My personal life has

nothing to do with you guys.

And you should never be brought in

to supporting me in my personal endeavors. That's just.

That was actually.

It feeds to a wider thing, which is

that nobody helps me in my personal thing.

Like I'm stuck dealing with all of it myself.

And it's so funny because even though we agreed.

Okay, a sabbatical. Wow.

That's like a thing that I can do.

And how long can I do it?

We had agreed in January, like, cool,

I'm gonna take it in April. Yeah.

But then habits, Right.

Made it so that I couldn't take it in April.

Like there was too much

happening because we had planned.

We'd said you were gonna take it in April and

then we planned a shit ton of stuff exactly.

For April and May and June where it actually

wasn't possible for you to break at that point.

So we kind of stretched your. Yeah.

And actually, I mean, even like one of the

departments that I'm responsible for was business development.

And business development in 2022

was not working for us. You know what I mean?

And that was really like, again, I.

It contributed more to that cycle of feeling worthless and

not like I'm contributing the way that I should.

Even though the market itself was really

dying and there was a lot of

issues with media companies across the landscape.

So it wasn't just me.

But I did take that sabbatical come August. Yeah.

And it was so funny how long it took me to like.

Even though we talked about it, even though

we planned it, I was like, I'm.

I'm taking the Sabbatical. Yeah. August 6th.

I was like, it's happening. I can't.

I'm like, I'm.

I'm pausing, everyone. It's going to be fine.

I'll be right back.

I'll be right back. Yeah.

And I literally. It's not.

People were asking like, well, what are

you going to do on your sabbatical? And.

And as if I had to plan something to do and

all I needed to do was just get back to connectedness

with myself and with life in a healthy way.

I had to cook again for myself.

I had to like, live in a pace that was healthy.

I was leaving the Middle east from my

full time home to a part time home.

And I was spending more time in Europe,

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